Life on a Mississippi Push Boat - Andrew Durham

The summer after my first year at college I got a chance to work for Capitol Towing. I was a deck hand on a pushboat in the ICW (intracoastal waterway) and lower Mississippi River. I was excited to make a real chunk of money, 1500 dollars in a month. It was also nice to pretend to be blue collar. I still can’t get over the irony that after taking so much ecology at The Evergreen State College I was going to work for the evil energy empire. My job was to push tank barges of petrochemicals to refineries on the river. However, as people in the industry are eager to point out, the use of barges is more efficient and more environmentally sound. On the mile to ton biases a truck uses nine times more fuel and a freight train uses about two and a half times more fuel then a tow of barges.

The DeAna LeDawn and the Kimberly Jane were the boats I was assigned to. Both were push boats as are most boats that deal with barges. The largest number of barges in our tow was eight. The largest number I ever saw on the river was about twenty-three. My job as deck hand was to clean the ship inside and out, tie up tow which means securing the barges together with wires, and throw ropes around timberheads on the terminals then tying them off to the boat. I was also to help the tankermen attach pipes to the tanks if the product wasn’t too dangerous. It is pretty safe work as long as you managed not to fall off the tow or boat. If you fall you can get sucked under the barges, then through the propeller.

We were working out of Houston up to Convent (a town past New Orleans). The product we were carrying was slurry oil or benzene. The main cargoes for barges are somewhat regional. In the ICW are petrochemicals and oil products (gasoline, aviation fuel etc); in the Mississippi is grain going to NOLA and steel products from NOLA. Gravel and rocks are not a large trade, but pretty much constant in the waterways. Just before I got off, the Kimberly Jane got orders to take a tow of slurry oil from Brownsville to Tampa. That is a long run but they get much longer. The ICW runs from Maine to Brownsville, the rivers are run to Chicago.

Barges and river traffic of cargo have always been an essential part of interstate travel. Canals crisscrossed the eastern seaboard and were the main form of cargo transportation till they were replaced by rail, which made them obsolete in the mid 1800s. These canals were traveled with horse-pulled barges. Mississippi and its steamboats have been ingrained in the American conscience, especially in Mark Twain’s writing. The captains and pilots of these boats were elite and with good reason. It took great skill to navigate the unregulated Mississippi river. A skill that, according to Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, could command 500 dollars a day, a great deal of money in that day. Pilots now get about 500 dollars an hour. Not quite as much, but enough to make it into the middle class and without a college degree or even a high school diploma.

However, not all work on the Mississippi is as glamorous now or then. While the Steamboats were the kings of the river and took on much of the cargo, there were still the trading skiffs and barges of the time before the Steamboats. These barges were usually pallets of timber relying on the current to carry them down the river and maneuvered with poles. Mark Twain describes these men colorfully. Some are portrayed as drunks and braggarts waiting to blow their pay and then sign on again. Others are painted as proud, violent and reckless. None are portrayed as refined or composed, in fact Twain comments on their vulgar language.

This portrayal would be an exaggeration today, if it wasn’t when written, but there is some truth in it all. Besides the captain and pilot the rest of the crew consists of deckhands and tankermen. I only knew seven deckhands and tankermen working on the Kimberly Jane and the Deanna LeDawn. However they said their stories were pretty typical.

Every deckhand had tried methamphetamines. One fellow had a story about working on a boat of speed freaks. He was eighteen and working his second hitch. He said that the crew would openly brag about their use to other crews at the terminals and on other boats. They said their lives consisted of smoking speed on the boat then when the hitch was off they would use their pay to make more meth and crack before they returned. When Willie got on the boat he threatened this open drug use so he was met with a lot of hostility. So when he broke his arm due to the pilot’s failure to warn him of a broken line he was ignored for two days. When the boat docked he says it is the first and only time he ever walked off a hitch. It is because of people like that crew that steel wool (used to smoke crack) is not allowed on barges.

Some deckhands have served some time in prison. One ex-con said he had heard of the barge work in prison. After 13 years in Huntsville he said he took the job because he figured it would be an easy transition going from one prison to the next. However, nobody violent or even too angry (except a few old captains) sticks around long because there is no room for that on a push boat. The limited space and rotating crew creates an atmosphere where everyone is on good terms but not too close.

Everyone had children when they were teenagers and most had to pay child support. The exception was twenty year-old Dustin and his girlfriend, who had a child on the way. On top of this, only three had finished high school. The pay is only 25,000 dollars a year and after a year and tanker man school they are guaranteed another 10,000 dollars. For a high school drop out this is normal pay, a little more then McDonald’s. Considering that room and board is taken care of and they have the promise of becoming an pilot at 120-90,000 a year this is a bright future and a good way to take care of their children’s finance needs. The men and the boat were some of the proudest and most loving parents I have met.

The people I knew working on the barge had good relationships with their children, however their love lives seemed to be way more turbulent. Most were not with their children’s mother and at least half were on bad terms. Everyone was worried about their significant other running around on them. Maybe overly so because there is really nothing they can do about it. I kept the 12:00 am to 6:00am shift with a guy call Bull. That was when he worried about his girlfriend the most. During one watch he was practically frantic. One of his boys back home had told Bull that he had seen the girl with another man. After, he got off the phone he called her a few dozen times before she turned off the phone (one he paid for, as he was quick to point out). Then he started shouting about how she is cheating on him. How she had done him wrong before. After he told me it was over with her. We turned on the TV for a couple of hours and sat quietly till the end of the shift. He stopped as we were walking back from taking off the guide lights (lights that indicate the end of the barges). Bull put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. The said to me, “But Andy, I love that bitch.”

You have to find other ways to pass your time besides worrying about what people are doing in the outside world. All boats are equipped with a television, and many have satellite or a videogame console. TV is an important distraction, but a man can only take so much Jerry Springer. It may be on most of the time but it is ignored as often as not. Games, mostly cards, and shooting the shit take up a great deal of time. Conversation is far ranging and usually pretty funny, as the poet Robert Sund says, “It’s surprising how many people are laughing, once you get away from universities and stop reading newspapers.” While most of the time is spent in the galley, the whole space of the boat is used. A lot of time is spent outside. Every boat has at least one fishing rod and usually a couple. The fresh fish is a welcome supplement to the crap the company will send as groceries. These men really appreciate the river. You have to, because it is the only outside world you see. I felt freest on the boat when I watched the sunrise come up over the refineries with the birds flying around us.

The people I met on the barge appreciated more than just the river. They appreciate nature itself. While they might not believe nature is as sacred as some one from the Sierra Club, their love for it runs just as deep. Many people who work on the barges grew up in a rural community. There are a large number of Cajuns on the boats who grew up in the swamps, a lot closer to nature than most environmentalists. Quite a few of the captains I met owned land. A lot of these men hunt and fish when they get off the boat. Two deckhands I knew were planning to go rafting in the everglades when they got off.

Most of the waterways appear about as natural as a train track, nature still abides there. There are always birds living around the rivers and canals, everything from pelicans to hawks. The river is also full of life. You see turtles basking on shore. The frogs often sing in the evening. Fish jump in the afternoon. Alligators circle the boat and will attack tortillas and rolls that are thrown in for them. Even the boat has a habitat.

One of the most powerful wildlife encounters I have ever had was on the barge. It is against the law to throw trash into the waterways so it is kept on the boat till it can be dumped on land. Our trash pile was in the stern behind the cabin where I slept. The trash bags were full of kitchen scraps that were fermenting in the hot southern sun. It not strange that these trash bags soon became home for larvae. However the predators that came to feast were out of the ordinary. When we moved some of the trash bags to pump the bilge I discovered one of the most terrifying and mesmerizing sites of my life. Under the trash bags was a city of black widows. There were webs everywhere holding the little bundles of larvae. I watched, captivated as these glossy black spiders with shinning red hourglasses scurried from the sun. The most ominous site was the numerous egg sacks. Who knows how long it would be before a wandering juvenile crawled through the air vent into my bed. We went to the hold and got the Raid. Then gingerly moved the trash as we sprayed the spiders with the poison. After a half hour the job was done. I looked around and thought the terrible beauty that now lay scattered across the deck was another reminder of the close quarters kept on this boat.